


Missa Pro Defunctis

by Omorka



Category: Ghostbusters (1984)
Genre: Angst, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-12-20
Updated: 2009-12-20
Packaged: 2017-10-04 16:38:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,723
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/32265
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Omorka/pseuds/Omorka
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The only reasons Peter ever goes to church these days are for weddings and funerals.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Missa Pro Defunctis

**Author's Note:**

> Strictly speaking, this falls somewhere between movieverse and cartoonverse, but I think it can be tolerably read either way. Set post-character death (which should be obvious from the title, but you never know).

The last time Peter Venkman had been in a church . . . no, that wasn't right, he'd technically been in dozens of churches in the past few years, but every single one of them had been on jobs. One thing ghostbusting had taught all of them, even Winston, was that ghosts rarely respected human ideas of sanctity. Oh, sure, over the past twenty-five years he'd seen a double handful of priests, preachers, high priestesses, monks, imams, and rabbis hold off ghosts until the Ghostbusters arrived, through what might have been personal sanctity, the force of their individual faith, but that could just as easily have been inherent psi ability. Equally devout clergy had become demon chow when they tried it. It certainly wasn't limited to any particular faith; he'd also seen it done by several mothers out of sheer desperation to protect their children, and once with faith in pure science, by an atheist physicist colleague of Spengler's.

Oh, God. _Egon_.

Technically, the last time Peter had been in a church for a reason other than a bust had been Zeddemore's wedding. That wasn't the sort of church he was used to, though, and there hadn't been a whole lot of God-talk. The time before that, the last time he'd been in a church for a ceremony of worship that he had any intention of participating in, was for his mother's funeral.

That had been at a church much like this one, with a vaulted ceiling, arches, carved angels, stained glass that went on forever, the works. It was only correct in the loosest sense to say that Peter had been brought up Catholic; churches of any sort actively made Charlie Venkman nervous, and his mother had never been personally devout. They'd gone to Midnight Mass on a few Christmas Eves, and Peter vaguely remembered a few Easters when he was very small. His mother had lit a candle and prayed a rosary when his grandmother had gone into the hospital, and again when she died, and a few times when his father had said he would come home and didn't. Other than these occasional glimpses, his life had been pretty much free of organized religion of any sort, except for Winston's personal faith, which he resolutely didn't push on his friends, and Ray's eclectic collection of rituals from all traditions, which hardly counted as organized.

Peter looked at his hands. Empty, they clutched at the stiff back of the pew in front of him. He let go with one hand and fumbled at the kneeler, dropping it and sending a report through the empty space. He winced, and slid down onto its meager cushioning.

Why was he doing this? Why had he come here, of all places?

He squeezed his eyes shut against threatening tears. This was a mistake. There was only one spirit he had any intention of praying to, and if he showed up, he'd be a Class Three - no, damn it, a spirit as strong as Egon's would be a Class Four for sure.

Peter struggled to breathe normally; he felt like his lungs were wrapped in iron bands. "May everlasting light shine upon him." He curled his head to the top of the wooden pew and murmured the few words he could remember. "He shall be justified in everlasting memory." English, rather than Latin, which was odd, considering that most of his childhood visits to Mass had been pre-Vatican II. "Through my fault, through my fault, through my most grievous fault . . . "

"That's from the regular service, not the Requiem. Peter, you don't let me do this to myself when I take a guilt trip," Ray complained softly, slipping into the pew behind him. Peter hadn't heard him approach, but he was too drained to be startled.

"None of us has ever died before." Peter's voice was strained, like a guitar string tuned too tightly and about to snap.

Ray shifted uncomfortably. "We've all _almost_ died dozens of times. None of us are young anymore, Peter. We all knew it would happen eventually, to one of us."

Peter sat back, his knees still on the low bench and his tailbone propped on the front edge of the pew. "I thought we'd all go at once. I really did, Ray; I believed that when something strong enough to take us down showed up, we'd all go out together in one blaze of glory, and Janine and Louis would have to pick up the pieces." He brushed at his eyes with his thumb and forefinger. "Some days, I even thought Janine would find a way to come with us."

"Yeah, I kinda did too, when I let myself think about it at all," Ray admitted. "But we all accepted the risks, Egon probably more than any of the rest of us."

"I could have stopped him," Peter said dully. His tongue felt like wood in his mouth. "I could have saved him."

"And doomed the city, Peter. Maybe even the world. He couldn't have explained it to either one of us in time." Ray's voice quavered. "I know you would rather it have been you, Peter; I feel the exact same way. But we couldn't have figured out what to do before it blew, and he understood all at once, like he does. Egon sealed the rift. He knew what would happen. He accepted that."

"Well, I can't!" snarled Peter, whirling around. He stopped immediately. Ray had tear tracks running down his cheeks, too.

"Oh, gods, Peter, I don't want to, either," Ray said, his voice perilously close to breaking. "I want to believe there's some gadget I can build that can fix everything, can unwind time and make it not have happened. If we hadn't found his _body_, I'd still be up in the lab trying to break through to that other dimension to rescue him. But . . . " Ray pulled his knees to his chest and hugged them, his heels perched on the edge of the pew.

"But we did," finished Peter. "He's dead, and there's no techno-magic any of us can do to bring him back. None of us came up with the solution that didn't involve one of us dying." He leaned forward, his head on his arms. "What are we going to do now?"

"Janine wants an actual funeral. She says she knows a Reform rabbi who'll do it, despite our unsavory reputations." Ray smiled a little through his tears at their secretary's forced brassiness.

"You know what I mean, Ray. Do we keep the business, now that half of our brain trust is gone? Could we bust like we've been busting, knowing how close a loss like that really is? Ray," Peter grabbed at his partner's hand, "if I lost you, too, I think I'd go off the deep end. You guys are my family, especially now that Winston's moved out and has a life and a wife and children of his own. God, I don't think I could handle that, either, if we were out on a bust and we lost him. I couldn't face Wanda, much less the kids."

Ray looked surprised. "Peter, I can't think of anything else I _could_ do. Besides, doesn't it seem like a damn poor memorial to Egon to stop doing his life's work?" His voice softened. "I - I think I'd go crazy, too, if I lost you, now, Peter. I know what you mean about family, and you and Egon have been my family for a long time. But we can't give up."

"Like you said, none of us are young anymore, Ray. We're not invulnerable."

"Maybe it's time to start teaching someone else how to do this, then. But it's got to get done. We save the world two or three times a _year_, Peter. Who are they gonna call, if we close up shop?"

Peter closed his eyes with a sigh. "You're right. Of course you're right. I just - every time I pick up a proton pack, he's going to be there, and he won't _be_ there."

Ray nodded. "It's going to hurt like hell. Probably for a long time. But we'll live." He stood up, bumping his knees on the missal rack. "Ouch. Our whole job is dealing with the mess death leaves behind. It was bound to get personal one day."

Peter flipped the kneeler back into place with one foot, pulled himself upright, and stretched. He still felt like someone had left a sack of lead shot where his heart was supposed to be. "What are we going to do if he, you know, shows up?"

"Well, I don't know. I don't think he has any unfinished business like that. I mean, he died saving the world; that's some kind of karma right there." Ray extended a hand to his remaining best friend. "But if he does - well, if he wants to go, we'll do whatever we have to do to help him move on, and mourn him all over again when he goes. And if _requiem aeternam_ isn't what he wants, I think the firehouse could use its own Class Four."

Peter took the offered hand and pulled Ray into an awkward one-armed hug over the intervening pew. He was still on the verge of tears, and he still felt guilty about surviving. But Ray was right - quitting would have disappointed Egon. If he'd been the one to die, and he came back and found the guys had closed up shop without him, for a few minutes his ego would have been gratified that the other Ghostbusters relied on him so much they thought they couldn't go on without him - and then he would have haunted their asses until they went back into business just to bust him, if it was the only way to make them keep going. Egon would have done - no, would do - no less.

"Man, these places are depressing," Peter murmured, looking at one of the stations of the cross. The next-to-last one, the one where St. John and the female disciples take the body off the cross. He'd forgotten Mary Magdalene was usually depicted as a redhead. St. Peter wasn't in this one; he'd fled already, by this point in the story, he thought. He couldn't remember. "Ray, get me out of here."

"Okay, Peter. Ecto's waiting. Let's go home."


End file.
